Are You Kosher? (14 page)

I headed back north, stopping again in Pine Mountain for one more taste and to get some peaches for Bubbe. All in all, I can say that I like the South; the only problem is that it is full of southerners. Traveling is wonderful, and experimenting with new cuisines to satisfy cravings is equally enjoyable. Where will my next road trip be? I have thought long and hard about it and I think maybe San Antonio. I hear that Tex-Mex is pretty good.

Chapter 26

My Daily Routine

Everyone has a daily routine that they follow. For some, it is waking up and immediately having that first cigarette. Others turn on the radio and lie in bed for about an hour until the dry-heaves from the night before go away. Some get right up, shower, shave, pish, plotz, have a little bite to eat, have some coffee, and off to work they go. They then come home, exchange some pleasantries with their significant others, eat dinner, watch some poorly-written sitcom, and go to sleep.

For a vampire, or more accurately, for me, the routine is not so mundane. For starters, I don’t have to work, and that is largely due to the fact that Bubbe is a financial genius, perhaps the most savvy businesswoman I have ever known. Thanks to her, the three of us are wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

A few centuries ago, she bought a small piece of land, parlayed that into a larger one, and eventually owned a very prime piece of real estate. You may know it as modern-day Kuwait. That’s right, Bubbe is the “landlady” of one of the largest oil-producing nations in the world. Every month, a check is generously deposited into an offshore account and the Kuwaiti government is none the wiser. Don’t let this get out; it would drive that backward nation crazy to know that they were paying rent to not only a woman, but a Jewish one. It would be like telling the leaders of Hammas that their supreme ruler was Rita Rudner. To say the least, we are set financially.

Back to my typical daily routine. I generally wake around 6:45 am, when Yankel starts to nibble on my toes, partly because he is hungry, partly because he loves to watch
The Today Show
. He likes Matt Lauer, but not Ann Curry so much. He hisses at the television whenever she comes on the screen. You know what they say about animals being able to judge a person? I watch the news with him and during commercials switch over to
SportsCenter
. I like sports even though I think it’s a damn shame what they are doing with the Mets.

Bubbe wakes aroundseven thirty, and before she even says good morning, immediately begins to kvetch. “Did you eat yet?” she asks.

“Not yet, I’ll eat in a little bit,” is my usual response.

This always sets her off. Almost six thousand years of the same routine and she still gets irritated. At least she is consistent. “Of course, wait for me to get up to cook for you. I should make you fend for yourself, you ungrateful little pisher!”

“It’s not like that, Bubbe,” I’ll protest and explain to her that I am more than capable of cooking for myself, and she will just reply, “Oh, so now I’m too old and feeble to cook for my family anymore? Never mind, I’ll make it.” She walks to the kitchen in a sour mood and ten seconds later will yell out to me, “Get your tuchas in here, I’m not bringing you your food.”

As great a cook as my bubbe is, breakfast is a category that has always fallen a bit short. There is only one dish on the menu of the Zena Glassman breakfast buffet, and it is soft-boiled eggs and rye toast. First chink in the armor, as I like to refer to it. Another thing that she does not do is laundry. I guess that after centuries of scrubbing, sweating, and cleaning up after others, she has reached her limit. She once tried to teach me how to use a washing machine, but it didn’t take. I’m not proud of it, but what can I say? I’m not good with technology. It’s a shame, too, because I wear very fine clothing from some of the biggest names in fashion, Mizrahi, Kenneth Cole, Ferragamo, Cardin. And when those clothes get past the point of what a dry cleaner can do, or if they just become too repulsive to even look at, I ship them off to Goodwill. I will tell you that the best-dressed derelicts in the world live in Brooklyn, thanks to the generous donations of the Izzy Glassman foundation.

So breakfast ends, as hard as it is to stomach. I meander back into the living room to watch
The Price is Right
. Yankel watches with me and, occasionally, so does Bubbe. My mother is usually waking at about this time looking for her first Bloody Mary the way a hungry shvartze looks for a twenty-four-hour KFC.

After a much better lunch than breakfast could ever hope to be, I shower, pack up some high-end clothing for Goodwill, and make my way over to Marine Park to run a couple of laps around the track while examining the female joggers for a potential feasting target. I sometimes head to the local driving range and hit a couple of buckets of balls to make sure that I keep my swing in shape so that if I decide to pursue that golf career, I am prepared. When I am done with the exercise, I do some food shopping for Bubbe, G-d forbid she should do a week’s worth of grocery shopping at once. I think that she is just under the impression that if the house burned down, or some goy shmendrik stabbed her in the heart with a stake, it would be a terrible waste of egg noodles.

I know what you’re thinking. “She’s got you there, Izzy.”

I get home and deliver the groceries to the wonderful world of Zena Glassman’s kitchen and excuse myself to take a nap. This is one of Yankel’s favorite moments of the day. Dinner is usually ready by the time I wake up, and it is always delightful. I watch
Jeopardy
and whatever reality show is on that particular evening. I’m not proud of it, but I am addicted. Depending on the mood I’m in, the weather outside, or if my only television options are
Grey’s Anatomy
or
Dateline
with Ann Curry, I’ll go out feasting. Anything is better than watching Ann Curry when you don’t have to.

Time for bed at this point. I play with Yankel a little and reassure Bubbe that I was discreet as always and that nobody has any idea that I am a vampire. I listen to her little speech about how when she was my age, it was much harder to feast and she would have to walk sometimes two miles, up hill in each direction, just to find a suitable feasting candidate, and my generation was just a bunch of spoiled pishers.

Now don’t get me wrong. This is a typical day in my life, but not the stone-written law. Most of my Jewish friends will appreciate the truth behind many of my statements. Vampire or not, I’m not too far off.

Routine is a very important thing in one’s life. You just can’t live haphazardly and do what you want when you want without any form of structure. People always seem to get tired of what they consider the tedious nature of their lives; it’s just another reason to kvetch. Accept the fact that your routine was developed by you and that it fits you. It is what gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you from becoming one of those shmendriks that blame everyone else for their personal problems. You made your bed, sleep in it. Just don’t ask Bubbe to clean the sheets; she doesn’t do that anymore.

Chapter 27

The Worst Night of My Life

Admittedly, I am a somewhat vulgar, hedonistic, narcissistic prick with an overly inflated opinion of my own beauty and sexual prowess. That being said, I, too, have been taken down a peg or two occasionally over the years. Whenever my head gets too big, Bubbe has the uncanny knack of pointing out one of my flaws at the most inopportune time, and my mother can embarrass me just by showing up. As bad as many of these situations have always proven to be, they pale in comparison to what was the worst night of my life. It was a night when I was forced to face my own mortality—that’s right, mortality. Even worse, I had to rely on the courage of a mortal to get me out of it.

I take you back to England in the late nineteenth century. We were on vacation in one of Bubbe’s many homes that are scattered around the globe. Each one was owned under a different name so as not to arouse suspicion. The name she used for this home was Susan Boyle. Imagine how angry Bubbe got when the real Ms. Boyle burst onto the scene; it complicated matters a little. Anyway, by this time, we had already realized that Tsvi and his four shmendrik friends had survived the flood while we were stowed away on the ark. Looking back, I can vaguely remember looking out one of the ark’s windows and seeing what looked like five men on a boat, one of them assuming a pose not unlike the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. I now know that it was Tsvi.

They were lucky enough to come ashore in what is now known as Puerto Rico. How’s that for being born under a bad sign? We landed in fucking Turkey, and this shmuck has a Caribbean paradise. Life is not fair. To make matters worse, Tsvi and his band of shmucks wasted no time at the first chance they had to convert mortals to Vampirism in an attempt to get back at Bubbe. He would have succeeded, too, had it not been for the fact that she really is a great cook. Foiled again, you shmendrik.

I know that you are wondering how they could have survived for so many centuries without mortal blood to feast on. Well, I said that he is a shmendrik, not an idiot. He brought, from what I understand, about one hundred mortals below deck as slaves and breeding material; it was sort of like a human version of livestock. These first mortals to cross the Atlantic with him were not converted, just left to go about the business of living their everyday lives of farming and reproducing, and occasionally being feasted on. They were not converted. That came much later, but thanks to this shmuck and his indiscretions, there was a time that it was very easy for people to accuse others of being members of the “undead,” I hate that term, or in some cases, to accuse others of witchcraft. I’ll get to that in the sequel. You don’t think that I’m going to give up all the goods, do you?

Bubbe’s home was in the West End of London, and the hysteria was growing among the populace. Signs and billboards were littering the area, warning everyone to stay indoors at night because the evil one had come to London and his demon spawn with him. Vampires were everywhere, be on the lookout. Some of the posters even had bad drawings depicting my kind as pale-faced, sharp-fanged savages who would creep into people’s home and kidnap their daughters. Even back then, bigotry abounded. At least they didn’t draw the vampires with yarmulkes on; that would be totally anti-Semitic. Besides, I only wear my yarmulke when I go after a nice Jewish girl, greasing the wheels, you know what I mean.

I was walking home one chilly evening, dodging the carts and carriages, looking forward to a nice hot meal, when I decided to take a shortcut through one of the many alleys that crisscross the streets of London. About halfway through, I came across a drunk who was begging for any form of money I could spare. I was only too happy to oblige and bent over to hand him a couple of pounds. Back then, that was a lot of money. When I stood up, I heard a voice behind me say in the hideous cockney accent, “’Allo, vampire.”

I turned to see that I was surrounded by five or six of these little insects. “Looks like you found yourself some trouble, devil,” said another. At first I thought that this was funny; it was like a Dickens novel come to life. They were circling me and I realized that once again, I was going to have to teach these mortals the lesson that you don’t attack a vampire at night.

“Listen, boys,” I said. “Why don’t we all just calm down. Let me buy you all a drink and some chips and avoid me having to …” Before I could get the last words out, one of the cockney cocksuckers crept up behind me and plunged a stake into my back.

The world around me began to spin, colors washed across my vision, and I faintly remember hearing squeals of delight about how they got another one. I fell to the ground, blood pouring out of me. The dim glow of street lamps began to fade; I was dying. I was sure of it. Evening or not, a stake to the heart is deadly to my kind, well, actually, to anyone’s kind, but you know what I am trying to say.

I do not know how long I lay there, but I do remember the voice. At first I thought that it was the Angel of Death come to receive his grand prize, but the voice was too fair. I opened my eyes and saw the face of a young boy, his round cherub-like face wrinkled with worry. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked. I did not answer. “Can you talk?” He brushed my hair away from my eyes as they began to slowly roll back in my head. “I’ll go get a doctor,” he announced and turned to run. I grabbed him by his coat sleeve and somehow managed to say, “No … get my mother.” I gave him the address and directions to the house, and he sprinted as if he were a criminal running from the cops.

Eventually he returned with not only my mother but Bubbe, and the three of them carried me home. I have no idea how long I had been lying there. I was fading in and out of consciousness and everything was a blur around me. I could not believe that I had been so careless, that I had been so arrogant, that I was going to die in fucking England.

Fortunately for me, I was wrong about where the stake hit. It did hit my heart but apparently only bruised it. That explained why I did not die instantly. If it had pierced my heart, you would not be sitting down reading what I am sure you have already decided is the greatest book in the history of literature. The bruise did cause me to get very sick. I suffered from a high fever for a couple of days and was having hallucinations and an odd craving for stout. Bubbe knew exactly what to do to nurse me back to health, but it was going to take time.

I can still hear the sound of my mother crying and having to be restrained by Bubbe from going out to seek revenge. Bubbe told her that it would happen in good time. I remember the long nights of her sleeping in the bed with me, caressing my face and kissing my forehead, her falling asleep and snoring. I can still hear Bubbe on more than one occasion yelling that it was Tsvi’s fault for his indiscretions and she was going to settle this with him once and for all.

About two weeks later, my fever had broken and I was able to open my eyes and even eat a little chicken soup. That stuff cures everything. I looked around the room and realized, perhaps for the first time, that I was not going to die. I could see that it was morning and that a light snow was falling. I saw my mother sleeping in her chair at the foot of my bed, and on her lap was the same little cherub-faced boy who had come to my aid that evening. He was fast asleep with his head resting comfortably against my mother’s chest. He looked cleaned up and somehow a bit heavier. Apparently, Bubbe would not let him leave. He was a runaway orphan named Liam, and Bubbe can sometimes be a sucker for those less fortunate. I think in this case, she felt like she owed him. Apparently, this was the first time that he was allowed in my room; they had not wanted to upset him.

I whispered, “Hey, kid, you awake?” He didn’t budge. I tried again, a little louder. “Hey, kid.” He moved a little and his head lifted up, the right side of his face pink from where he had been leaning on my mother. He looked around and our eyes met; his went wide with excitement and he ran to me. “Bless you, sir. You’re all right!” he almost shouted. Mom continued to sleep; she always was a deep sleeper. He leaned across the bed and hugged me and asked, “Can I get you anything? Are you hungry?” I smiled at that little face and just said, “No, I’m fine. Where’s my grandmother?” He lowered his head slightly and let out the crooked smile of a boy who had a secret. “What?” I asked. “Where is she?” Liam looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said in that adorable little English accent, “Bubbe went to fix it.”

“You call her Bubbe?” I asked, slightly surprised.

“Yes, sir. She told me to. She likes it.” Bubbe must have really been taken by this little fellow.

I was obviously in no condition to go out and look for that crazy old woman, so I was forced to just lie in bed and hope that she knew what she was doing. This is how the story was explained to me and I can tell you that it was the last time I ever underestimated her.

Bubbe went out into the streets of London about three hours before I had awakened to find little Liam and my mother in my room. She was going all out, determined to find the cockney goyem that had attacked me. She even altered her appearance to that of a feeble old woman. It is a special trick that vampires can actually pull off with a great deal of practice. We are able to alter the way we look to appear younger or older, change our hair and eye color, and for the few who have mastered the technique, even change our weight. Bubbe is one of the best at doing this.

She wandered the streets until after dark and made her way to the area that I must have told her was where I was attacked. It was getting very late and there was no sign of anyone; she had just about given up for the night when she heard footsteps behind her and a voice say in that cockney tone, “Look what I just found, boys.” She turned and saw the same six goyem who were responsible for my current condition.

“Hello, young man,” she said in an exaggerated, weak voice, “Do you think that one of you nice boys could help an old woman home?”

They moved in closer and one of them grabbed her by the arm. “We hit the mother lode!” he announced. “Not just a vampire, but an old Jewish one.”

“Bring her into the alley; this will be three in less than two months,” the leader said, excited.

The group pounced on her and carried her off into the same alley that was almost the site of my last day on Earth. They threw her to the ground. Bubbe playing the part of a weak old lady the whole time. She even forced tears and began to tremble in mock fear. “Why are you doing this? I am an old woman. Does your mother know what you’re doing? This is terrible.” She went on with the Jewish guilt.

One of these shmucks backhanded her across the face and another punched her in the gut. The leader walked in front of Bubbe’s slumped over form and said, “Off to hell with you, she-devil,” as he raised his stake high above his head.

“Now what do we have here?” A voice came from the shadows with a much more tolerable English accent. Bubbe’s attackers turned in all directions and a tall figure dressed in black emerged to examine the situation. He pointed his finger at each one of them, counting the odds. “Six men against one little old Jewish lady. You’re either very brave or not too bright.”

The leader told him that this was no business of his and she was more than just an old Jewish lady; she was a vampire. The stranger’s eyebrows lifted and he said, “You don’t say, a real vampire.”

“That’s right,” said the leader. “Now take off before you find yourself some trouble.”

“Fuck this Jew!” the limey yelled. “Get him first.”

“I think that you may want to revise your strategy,” came another voice from the dark. Another large man dressed in black emerged, followed by another, and another.

The first man said to the leader, “Look at this, I think we are the ones who are outnumbered.”

“I’m telling you that she is a vampire and has to die!” he shouted, holding the stake in front of him defensively.

The first man looked at him and said, “Well I’m sure you’ve read the posters. We’re everywhere.” He smiled and revealed his fangs. “Are you alright, Aunt Zena?” he asked Bubbe.

“Yes, dear, it takes more than a shmuck like this to hurt me, Joshy.” Bubbe responded to her nephew, my cousin Joshua. Bubbe calls him Joshy.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Joshy replied.

You are probably wondering how this is possible. Well, it is a short story, and actually, when have you ever known a Jew to tell a short story? I’ll try to sum up quickly.

I’ve mentioned Bubbe’s friends, Frank and Lizzy Markowitz. Well, Lizzy’s maiden name is Glassman; she is Bubbe’s sister. They had decided to settle in Europe and eventually made their way to England. Lizzy never had children before the conversion but had always wanted to be a mother, much like my own mom. From what I understand, Frank won a little orphan baby in a card game and decided that he would be a great Chanukah gift. The only problem was that he won him in August, so he had to hide him from Lizzy until December. She was thrilled. She named him Joshua and did as much as my mother had done with me—fed him, loved him, and converted him on his eighteenth birthday.

My cousin is a good man but a little unstable. He formed the JVDL, The Jewish Vampire Defense League. I think it was just an excuse to walk around in black all of the time, but he was good at what he did, and he loved Bubbe, Aunt Zena.

“Now what should we do with them?” Joshua asked Bubbe. “Make them feel what Izzy felt,” she replied coldly.

The leader of the attackers immediately called for his friends to strike and before he knew what was happening, two of his friends’ bodies had been broken against the stone walls of the alley, another had an arm ripped from his body, and that was now being used to bludgeon another. The fifth was thrown to the ground, his spine collapsing on impact. The only one standing was the leader who had just relieved himself.